Sunday, 24 May 2015

As the final part of my first year of Fashion Design at WSA I had to do about two weeks of third-year work experience. I was assigned a group of third year Fashion Design students to contact and ask to work with, but ended up working with mainly one of the third years, whilst also occasionally chipping in to help a few others. It was a set up which both allowed third years to take on a small managerial role, and first years to experience first-hand a small part of what third-year fashion design was like.Mainly I was given tasks like preparing pattern pieces for sewing, drawing and pressing pleats, and hand sewing, but I also stood and modeled in quite a few of the designers final reviews for their final major project collections. Then for my final part of the experience I chose to help out with the WSA Graduate Fashion Show as a dresser backstage.

I was initially quite apprehensive about helping out, thinking that it was going to be a really long and stressful day, however, I was very wrong! It was a long day of being on our feet and we had to be quick and organised, but all in all it was SO much fun!Each of the collections were made up of six outfits, there were two shows, and for both shows I was in charge of 6 outfits which I had to dress on one model throughout the day. My team was the 'sporty' looking models, and we all worked really well together, making all the changes really quick and making the work fun rather than stressful. It was also so amazing to get up close to all the garments, and see all the collections together before they went out on the runway, and for a fashion design student like myself, it was hugely inspiring too!

Preparing for the start of Show 1

All dressed for the start of Show 1.
First collection of the show; Lucy McCann 'Murmuration'

Second collection I dressed.Lucy Hood: 'Effervescent'

Third collection I helped dress.Yi Lua: 'Flower'

The last collection our team dressed for Show 1.Amy Carlin: 'Communicating in Silence'

Last collection of Show 1, and one of my favourites- 'Galaxy Racer Club'
by the lovely Odella Yue, who I was fortunate to work with whilst she was
making her final collection.

[The above four photos were taken from the twitter account @_MakeFuture]

Our Sporty-look models all ready for their first appearance in Show 2.Collection by Grace Fincham: 'Urban Reality'

Piling up all the garments ready for the next quick changes during Show 2!

Shoes and Accessories used in Show 2- Plus the horse bag
which was just awesome!

Second of the collection's we dressed in Show 2.

Jennifer Lewis: 'The Cactus Hill Motel'

Third collection we dressed- Again I was lucky enough to work with the designer of
this collection during the lead up to the show.Angie Mena: 'Progressive Flux'

The fourth collection we dressed in Show 2.Ziyan Zhao: 'Fresh'

Fifth collection we had to dress for Show 2.Joanna Karmowska: 'Modernised Japan'

The last collection we dressed for Show 2.Katie Lee: 'Incurving Forms'

-- Ash Cam

Wednesday, 20 May 2015

I realise I have been slightly absent from blogging for the past few weeks, however, I have had a really important deadline which meant all efforts were focused on getting my fashion design projects finished. Hopefully now that all four of my projects are completed and handed in, I can start doing a bit more on my blog again. I have a list of post ideas I really want to do, so I shall be trying to get round to doing them all and making a real effort with my blog over the Summer.

Anyway, moving swiftly on to what this blog post is about! Part of the reason why I made this blog was to talk about and show the work I do for my Fashion Design degree, so now that all of my projects are complete I thought I'd do a little round up post on everything I've done during my first year of university!

My first fashion project was called 'Original Copy', and the objective for it was to recreate an already made mens shirt from a basic mens shirt block pattern. This project helped to develop pattern drawing skills, making us think around the normal structure for garments, and also garment construction, learning all the complex sewing techniques in order to make the shirt.

Our second project was called 'Fabric First: Through the Wardrobe'. The theme of this project was to choose a person we know and admire, either in style, personality or interests, and then use any of these aspects to design a 5-outfit collection inspired by them. The 'Fabric First' part of the project encouraged us to look into fabrics before we begin designing, this way we'd be able to design with them in mind. Below is both my line up and one of the skirts from the collection I made up in final fabrics.

Full Line Up.

Skirt from Look 3 of line up made using final fabrics
[Model- Charlotte James].

Close-Up of Skirt

My third and last project of my first year was inspired by Cubism. I chose to look at faces in cubist artwork, particularly focusing on eyes, converting them into geometric shapes, like ovals, to then create garments using these shapes. For this project we were told we had to use draping techniques to create and design the 6-garment collection. Here are pictures of my line-up, and the garment I chose to create from my line-up.

And that concludes my first year of Fashion Design at WSA! I hope you enjoyed getting an insight into each of the projects I've done for my degree, and I hope to continue to do this sort of thing once term restarts in September/October. In fact I'm hoping to document it stage by stage next year, so that any of those whom are interested in Fashion Design can get a more in depth insight to what the course is like from a student's perspective!